macOS has never supported RAR. Drop the archive below and get your files back — no app, no admin rights, nothing left on your Mac.
Every Mac ships with Archive Utility, the invisible little app that unpacks a .zip when you double-click it. It also understands .tar, .gz, .bz2 and a handful of Unix formats. It does not understand .rar, and it never has.
The reason is licensing, not capability. RAR is a proprietary format owned by RARLAB, and the compression side is patent-encumbered — Apple has never shipped support for it. So a .rar file on a Mac just sits there: double-clicking may open it in a text editor, show a broken-file icon, or do nothing at all. Your download is fine and your Mac is fine; the format is simply not included.
Use the box at the top of this page. The .rar is uploaded over an encrypted connection, unpacked on our server, and you download the individual files you actually need. It runs on any Mac, including a locked-down work or school machine where you can't install software, and on an iPad or iPhone where you can't install a RAR app at all. The upload is deleted automatically one hour later.
This is the right choice for a one-off archive, a shared machine, or when you just want the one PDF that's inside.
If RAR files reach you regularly, install an app once and stop thinking about it. Two are free and widely used:
Both are honest, ad-free software. We would rather tell you that than pretend an online tool is better for every situation — it isn't.
If you already have Homebrew, one line gets you a command-line extractor:
brew install unar — then unar archive.rar unpacks it into the current
folder. lsar archive.rar lists the contents without extracting. This is the same engine
The Unarchiver is built on, it handles RAR5 and multi-part sets, and it scripts nicely if you deal
with archives in bulk.
| Situation | Best option |
|---|---|
| One archive, right now | Extract it online (top of this page) |
| Work or school Mac, can't install apps | Extract it online |
| iPhone or iPad | Extract it online |
| RAR files arrive weekly | The Unarchiver or Keka |
| Multi-part set (.part1.rar, .r00, .r01) | A desktop app — all parts must sit together |
| Scripting or bulk work | unar via Homebrew |
| Archive is confidential | A desktop app — nothing leaves your Mac |
You'll be asked for the password before extraction continues. There is no way around a password you don't have — a "RAR password remover" will not recover it, and most of those downloads are malware. If you're missing the password, go back to whoever sent the file.
Large RARs are often split into name.part1.rar, name.part2.rar… or the
older .r00, .r01 style. Every part must be present in the same folder, and
you open only the first one. Because an online extractor takes a single upload, this is the one
situation where installing The Unarchiver is genuinely the easier path.
Usually the download was truncated — a partial file is the most common cause by far. Download it again before assuming the archive itself is broken.
Archives made with WinRAR 5 and later use a newer format that older Mac tools sometimes reject.
Both this extractor and current versions of The Unarchiver, Keka and unar handle it.
macOS ships with Archive Utility, which handles .zip, .tar, .gz and a few others. RAR is a proprietary format owned by RARLAB and Apple has never licensed it, so double-clicking a .rar does nothing useful. It is not a broken file and not a broken Mac — the format simply isn't included.
Drop it on the box above. The archive is uploaded over HTTPS, extracted on our server, and you download the files you want. Nothing is installed on your Mac and the upload is deleted an hour later.
For occasional archives, an online extractor avoids installing anything at all. If you open RAR files regularly, The Unarchiver (free, Mac App Store) or Keka (open source) are the two apps most Mac users settle on — install one and .rar files open on double-click like any other archive.
Install a command-line extractor with Homebrew — brew install unar — then run unar archive.rar in the folder you want. unar handles RAR5 and multi-part archives and is the same engine The Unarchiver uses.
You need every part in the same place, then open only the first one — part1.rar, or the .rar file that accompanies .r00/.r01. Opening a middle part fails because the archive is split across all of them. Online extractors, including this one, take a single upload, so multi-part sets are the one case where a desktop app is genuinely easier.
Yes — that is the main reason to use it. Work and school Macs often block installing apps, and a browser-based extractor needs no permissions at all.
Extracting is safe; running what comes out is where the risk is. Be wary of archives from unknown sources containing .dmg, .pkg or .app files, and never type your Mac password into something that came out of a downloaded archive. Documents, images and video are harmless to open.